The Family In Mind

This blog aims to be a personal account of the effects and reality of the disorder known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D) or formly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. This is for educational purposes and to raise awareness of the reality of this disorder, particularly in the UK.

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I feel that I should give an introduction to this blog; why is it being made and for what purpose.
Lots of people like to give their own accounts on what goes on in there life; sometimes it's nice to openly share what we're going through.

This blog however will not give you every inch of what goes on in my life, but will aim to explain more to people about my disorder and the things that I go through.

I suffer from a disorder that some people deem as 'unreal', 'fake', 'stupid' or 'weird'. Most people like to run away from the disorder that I suffer with because it is deemed as 'scary' or 'dangerous'.

I suffer with a disorder called Dissociative Identity Disorder, formly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. So right now you're probably either interested or wondering if I'm anything like the horrific murderers you see in 'My Bloody Valentine' or whether I am a bit of an ass like Hank from 'Me Myself and Irene'.

I would like to say from this point already, I have never murdered anyone or had any convictions of assult, nor have I ever been arrested - restrained by police, yes - but I've never been arrested as a result of one of my 'personalities' or 'alters'.

For this blogs purposes I will be referring to myself as Willow (for safety and security purposes) and to the disorder as D.I.D and will mostly refer to my personalities as 'alters', simply because psychiatrists and psychologists do not like to recognise our personalities as seperate people but as an alter of our own personality, despite the fact that they respond to different names, have different mannorisms, different likes and dislikes in food, movies, drinks and different hand writing and skills etc.

What I aim to do with this blog, is try to raise awareness of the disorder, particularly in the UK because it is strongly misunderstood in the UK and to try to show that what the media displays as D.I.D is not the reality of the disorder.

I do not aim to make people question whether they have D.I.D or aim to help people self diagnose themselves, however I would gladly open my arms to a friend in the UK that also suffers with this disorder (it's just nice to know someone else with it).

I look forward to writing this blog and I hope that you will learn something from what I am going to be writing about.

If you're new to D.I.D or are reading this for educational purposes, you may be unaware of the creation of alters and why it happens.

People naturally have different levels of coping. What may have seemed like hell for one person to go through, might be nothing for another. People with D.I.D tend to go through something or a range of several events that they mentally and/or physically cannot cope with and bury the memories of the events to their subconscience. No matter how much we think we can just ignore something, ignoring it can make it worse.

In the mind of someone that suffers with D.I.D, we all generally have not wanted to live with a particular event or set of events; and as a way of coping with the events our subconscience creates an alter to deal with the event or future events like this one instead; hence why a lot of D.I.D suffers note that they have severe memory loss, particularly of their childhood.

Now some people with D.I.D suffer with the displaying of alters with no names. Currently all of my alters have names; I say currently because I never know when I'm going to get a new member of the family.

It's not like going to an orphanage and deciding you want to adopt a child and it's not like going to a puppy farm and selecting the one out of the litter you want. Some of us manage to understand parts of an alter before they ever emerge.

I currently have myself and 7 other alters. My latest alter refers to herself as "Jazz" or if she's feeling very hyper, "Jazzberries". I managed to understand that Jazz was going to be a new alter because I started hearing her in my head. A lot of people have different accounts on how they get a new alter, but personally for me, I normally start to hear a new name and soon a new voice.

Think of it like someone entering a conference room and the members already in there, start whispering the new persons name.

My alters have mixed genders and have a range of different thoughts and attitudes to social occassions and events. My alters like to engage in different activities, eat different foods, drink different drinks etc. Some times it can get confusing when I'm trying to eat something I like, and one of my alters start telling me that they don't like that food.

The majority of D.I.D sufferers will express the ability to hear their alters; and truth be told, they can be irritating. For example, I'm writing this now and my alter Sammy, a 5/6 year old little girl, is telling me that she does not understand half of the large words that I am using; and my "protector" alter, Zak, a 20 year old male, is telling me he finds it funny to see me writing so formly.

You'll have noticed I have referred to Zak differently, by labelling him as my protective alter. I wish to tell you more about Zak in a later blog (You may find it amusing that he is disappointed that I am not writing about him now), as I will need to go into a bit more depth about why he is identified as my protective alter.

You'll remember that towards the start of this post, I claimed that alters were created to deal with different events or events that may occur in the future. Putting Zak aside as my protective alter, I will now introduce you to my other alters.

Sammy, the 5/6 year old girl (I say 5/6 year old because she has a habbit of lying about her age to feel grown up) is deemed as my 'little' alter. Amazingly I cannot remember my past below the age of 13 years old, but Sammy can remember my very early memories of life, and we believe she may know some important things that I do not remember about myself and my past. Sammy tends to display herself when I am feeling vulnerable or scared.

Tom is an interesting character. He is around 55/60 years old (not sure, I've never found out!) and believes he is a male american. From what I've learnt, Tom believes he can deal with my finance and business like situations, so he tries to 'come out' to help out with those situations.

Riley is a 17 year old girl. She is a fairly new alter and I'm not sure of her trigger. What we do know is that she is a lesbian, but is struggling to come to terms with her sexuality, and therefore self harms to try and cope with the difficulty of her sexuality. You may be interested to know that I am a lesbian myself.

Jazz, as mentioned before, is a 14 year old girl, who is extemely hyper. We are not sure of her trigger yet, though I will inform this blog when I do know.

Now then, although these all sound like they are great for coping with my situations in life, there are the negative alters that make every day life very difficult to cope with. I have two violent alters; one named Bick who is around 40 years old and another named Rob, who I do not know the age of. I'm sure that during the time of this blog being written, you will soon find out more about these guys and some of the distress that they cause me, my family, my partner and my other alters.

Having 7 alters, may seem like a lot to someone who doesn't suffer with D.I.D and in some cases, it is very difficult to listen to 7 different people at one time; but I know that I am not in one of the worst boats of D.I.D at this stage; as some have accounts of dealing with more than 30 different personalities and some D.I.D sufferers deal with whats called D.I.D Systems; a whole different level of D.I.D where a range of more than 100+ alters can be seen.

All the extensions of alters will be brought up in later blogs as well.

So that for now is a basic introduction to my alters. I hope this has been educational or informative to you. If you have any basic questions which haven't been covered yet, feel free to post a comment and I will try to reply or write a blog response to it.

Hi again guys, decided I would expand the information on Zak. (Don't worry, the blog will become more of an update of my habbits, for now I am just introducing you to the family in my mind).

Most D.I.D sufferers (in fact I can't think of a single person I know that doesn't have this) have a "Protective" alter. Because of the trauma we went through in our past, our subconcious mind instantly tries to protect us. The age of a protective alter can vary from person to person.

This alter is called the "Protective" alter simply for the reason that they are there to protect us from being harmed. When someone with D.I.D goes through therapy, they can learn to communicate with their Protective alter really well and learn what exactly will trigger their Protective alter.

Zak is extremely proctective of me and is a completely different "person" from me (of course he's still an alter, but if you met him, you would realise that he's nothing like me at all). Zak is very confident in himself, very strong minded and easy to defend. Whilst it sounds great to have a protective alter (and he's laughing as I'm thinking this) Zak does have his flaws, (he doesn't want to admit it but he does).

He is over competitive and is triggered by male competition, competitive behaviour, if someone is slightly threatening towards myself or my partner or is triggered when another alter is really really kicking off (aka Rob and Bick that were mentioned in the introduction to my alters blog). Zak also has high testosterone levels, which can make him a handful.

While he has his flaws, he has protected me in several instances, which has proven his title as my protective alter.

As a particular instance and as for an educational real life experience for you, I will tell you of the last time Zak protected me (besides keeping things quite).

A little while ago I went to the doctors complaining of tiredness and the doctors decided to send me for a blood test that morning. Now heres where the change in alters took place.

I have a huge fear of needles that I keep trying to be brave about, but that morning I was really upset about other things, so I couldnt handle having an injection on top of that, and because I was more scared than anything else, my child alter, Sammy came out.

Sammy had the blood test done and the doctors realised that one of my alters were out. Sammy called my mum and Partner to let them know that she was lost and she didn't understand what was going on. After leaving Sammy in a hallway for over an hour, a doctor finally came to tend to her and realised that she wasn't behaving like the 20 year old that she looked like. The doctor called the mental health team and discussed things in front of Sammy. Sammy warned them that Rob was being very loud and she didnt feel safe but they left her in the hall way again to 'calm down' before she could go home.

Sammy got scared and decided to leave the doctors. Unfortunately she got that scared that Rob came out and went on a mission to kill me (He is violent in the sense that he will do anything to try and get rid of me). My partner contacted the police as no one knew where I was for over 2-3 hours.

To my luck; Rob was about to throw me in front of a train at a train track some while away, when Zak came out to stop it from happening.

Zak then walked us safely home, explained the situation but eventually I was able to return to greet my partner and the police. Zak protected me and my family by coming out and bringing us home. It sounds easy for Zak to do, and you're probably wondering why he didn't come out in the first place, but there is a certain degree to how and when they are able to take over my body; not to suggest that I have control of it, just that the alter that is out at the time has a certain level of being able to stop another alter coming out; quite commonly the protective alter not being able to get out is how most D.I.D sufferers end up in a fatal accident.

Why didn't I stop all of this? I couldnt. As far as I was aware, I thought I was blacked out. One minute I was in the doctors, the next I was in my partners room; its like a step in my life has been skipped, and the only reason I have been able to relay the information above to you, is from the word of mouth from Zak and the information given to me by mother and partner.

So as you can see, a lot of D.I.D sufferers are very reliant on the help of their protective alter; I know I certainly rely on Zak. But every D.I.D sufferers protective alter is different, and what my protective alter is, might be the complete opposite (in mannorisms) from someone elses; but share the same role in that they are here to protect this body.

I hope this has helped you to understand a bit more about protective alters; again if you have any questions about Zak, feel free to ask and he may be able to reply to you, or I certainly will.

Hey guys, thought I'd update because I'm having a noisey day today (hoping that writing about it might make it go away or at least calm down a little).

So if you've read the other posts; you'll remember that I can hear my alters in my head pretty much all the time; they comment on situations, food, clothing, people etc.

Now I know I've posted some quite amusing thoughts that Zak and Sammy have said; and whilst they are funny, they are nothing compared to some of the things I hear.

Bick and Rob (the violent alters) can some times get out of hand. Imagine your in a conference room again; only this time, instead of introducing a new alter; someone in there is shouting, screaming; and it's echoing off the conference room walls. This is the best description I can think to give when my violent alters are loud.

What I try to avoid, is letting them out.

Please click here and skip to 3:26. That is a good example of a violent alter kicking off. (If you're really interested in D.I.D, I would recommend the whole of that documentary as a starting point of learning).

Rob in particular, kicks off like that, if not worse. In the past Rob has taken more than 4 people and two police officers to restrain him; so you can see exactly why me and my partner try to stop them from emerging as best as we can.

Violent alters generally believe that we need to be punished. Sometimes I can wake up and find very... disturbing things for me and my partner to find. For example, Bick has written 'die' in my own blood, cut things like 'fat' into me and burnt me. If they communicate to me through their voice or writing, it generally consists of "You deserve to die" or "You deserve all the hate and pain in the world"; or things to that similar description.

Some violent alters can be calmed; but as of yet, we have no form of technique other than restraining my violent alters. You can only imagine the distress that this puts me and my partner through. Not to mention, that if they do manage to get out; they are vile to people with language, and on one or two occassions; Rob has threatened people or bitten them.

Some people try to claim that violent alters are 'possession of the devils', but studies have proven that it is a negative effect of our coping mechinism. It is natural in most cases of abuse for people to go through a period of thinking they 'deserved it' or 'deserve to be punished' for what happened; hence, although our alters are generally considered a coping mechinism or for safety, negative alters can also be produced by the subconcious mind, and in most cases, they do exist; making that the main focus of needing therapy and help.

I have to admit, it's scary, and I try to act brave about the things that happened to me. If I showed how my violent alters really make me feel, I would cry all the time, because they are so horrible, but then if I did, you could say I am letting them win; so I try to act brave to make it go away.

My violent alters are currently under no control, and can emerge at any point, and at any time; one minute I can be me, and the next you could be restraining Rob on the floor or having to call the police to stop Rob from harming me or someone else.

Every D.I.D sufferer will experience different types of violent alters; some people have had some close escapes from dying by driving (hence why I do not drive a vehicle any more); pulling up the hand brake whilst someones driving (Rob and Bick have tried doing this); running into the road; taking overdoses or extreme cases of self harm etc.

I hope this has given you a bit of an insight to violent alters; I hope that in time I can tell you more about mine, particularly when I understand them more. If you have any questions feel free to comment below.

So I haven't posted in a few days (simply because I've had a few bad days with my emotions, voices and alters).

I wanted to tell you about an episode that I had yesterday, I don't remember what occurred but my partner managed to film it for me, so I have watched it back, and it kind of made me want to cry watching it.

Yesterday I started experiencing a flashback (which is common for people with D.I.D) and I actually thought I was in a flashback of my past, so I started crying and acting very irrational. My partner said she found the experience quite upsetting to see me in so much distress.

I'm not sure what the flashback was of, because I can't remember it, but at the minute my memory is pretty weak. I've been struggling to remember what meals I've eaten or what I've had to drink, or even just some of the things I've been doing today.

Memory loss really can be an irritating thing. Some people with D.I.D can co-operate with their alters and get them to note down in a book what they've been up to and what they've been doing, but I am currently unable to do this stage, as I am still in the early stages of learning about my D.I.D.

As a bit of a positive, besides Rob being aggressive in my head quite a lot, my other alters are behaving quite well. Sammy went for a McDonalds yesterday and kindly saved me some. She also drew a picture for my partner the other day of them playing with her favourite toys in the sun. She can be so cute sometimes.

I will be updating soon with more posts with more educational points soon, just at the moment I've been spending my time with my partner as it's nice to be me for a good few hours.

Willow xxx

p.s. I broke my foot the other day :( Got to go to the hospital tomorrow to see about a cast and some crutches (dont worry though, it was a stress fracture and not caused by one of my alters, Im pleased to say).

Sorry been away for a while. My foots feeling a lot better but I've been looking after my partner who's had chronic tonsilitis and a possible quinsey, so she's been out of action for about a week and a half.

So as a comeback, I thought I'd tell you about something quite cute that happened during my partners time off. Now as mentioned before, the majority of D.I.D sufferers have a little alter to some description; mine being 5/6 year old Sammy.

Sammy was really upset to find out that her 'auntie' had been taken ill with chronic tonsilitis and decided to try and make her day a bit better. So Sammy revealed herself and made her a 'Get Well Soon' card with her new scented pens, which is currently sitting on our computer desk.

She also offered to make my partner some lunch - bless her.

We are currently having to work to support Sammy as she keeps requesting to start school (which obviously we can't let her do). We're thinking of 'home' schooling her, in other words, picking up a few bits and pieces from the local pound shop and throwing a couple of educational sessions together to see how she gets on. We've been advised by other D.I.D sufferers to try things like workbooks, stickers and charts.

Whilst little alters are quite 'cute', they can cause all sorts of complications like this. I've seen examples of others difficulties, such as their little alter wanting to learn to ride a bike, or accidently taking a hold of the wheel whilst you're driving.

Not only that, but from what I've heard from others that have met Sammy, it can also be quite distressing to deal with and understand, particularly when what you see is a 20 year old woman, but in the heart, mannorisms, actions and speech you see a 5/6 year old. I think as the sufferer of D.I.D I wont ever fully understand the distress or difficulties it can cause for other people, but I respect that it must be difficult.

On the other hand of littles though, one of my most troublesome alters at the minute has been Jazz, my hyperactive alter. She's began a habbit recently of begging to go to parties and displaying herself at the most of inconvenient times.

It probably sounds pretty exciting to have a hyperactive alter, but it's really not. Quite frequently when I've returned to my state, I have felt very exhausted, out of breath and like my heart is pounding. Also, not all hyperactive behaviour consists of being really happy. On many occassions out of annoyance that Jazz can't do what she wants, she has:

Bashed her head off of doors

Grabbed red hot light bulbs

Smashed pans over her head

Jumped on people to make them dance

Fiddled with electrics

Tried to jump out of a moving car

Tried to run away

My partner and family currently cope by trying to make her see that she can't go partying every night because of 'school' and that she can have a mini in door party by drawing, eating chocolate and listening to the radio. My partner has found this method to be quite effective after about 45 minutes of calming her down.

We're not 100% sure on Jazz's triggers yet, but I'll make sure to update when we have some form of idea.

So that's a bit more on littles and hyperactivity, I will try and update more very very soon. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment =]

So I haven't been able to update for a while for multiple reasons, laptop being broken; trying to keep myself busy rather than talking about it all.

I thought I'd update you with a recent real life experience, for your interest and for an educational side of how some of my alters behave.

My alters have recently been very stirred and upset, which has been causing loss of time, violent notes being left in our book and other difficulties with behaviour and coping.

The other day, I went to visit my Psychiatrist/Referral/Type Of guy. What seemed to occur was that he was wrapping up our sessions with me, as discussed at the last appointment (as he just refers me on to the right therapy) and that he wouldn't be seeing me again now unless the therapy referral didn't go through. For some reason I was particularly emotional about it that morning and got very upset.

Somewhere along the line I became distraught, and my alter Rob saw opportunity to take things in his own hands. After my partner and mother recieved a distressing phonecall from me, the local police were contacted and went on a search to find Rob.

Sneekily and using time to his advantage, Rob purchased some paracetamol, a bottle of water and some razor blades.

Unfortunately Rob had a lot of spare time to cause harm to me and managed to cut me all up my left arm (thankfully none deep enough to require hospital or medical attention; other than a clean up). Because Rob had purchased cheap blades, he couldn't get all the plastic off of the blades, meaning that he could only cut about a cm in. After Rob became very frustrated with not being able to cause the damage he wanted to cause, Zak took the opportunity to bring us back home (I'm sure you're starting to see why we refer to Zak as my protective alter).

My partners mum gave Zak a clean up and some food and the police went on their way.

What did I get up to? I woke up the next day to my partner. I gave her a huge hug when she accidently leant on my arm, and I yelped. Nearly 19-20 hours after the incident, I was only just being filled in on what had actually happened, as I had no idea! I can't remember the appointment with my Psychiatrist, sadly, so I have no idea what's actually happening with my treatment, but I think my partner may do.

This incident has caused me physical and mental pain (you wont believe the headaches alters cause you!) and has also hurt my family from being distraught.

I think all this proves is, you never know whats going to happen when you wake up.

About Me

Hi there,
I am a sufferer of Dissociative Identity Disorder (formly Multiple Personality Disorder). I have created this blog to share my real life experiences in order to try and raise awareness on the effects and reality of DID.
Each person with DID suffers with the disorder differently, so this blog is to give my personal account to either aid with education in the subject or just to help with the awareness.
I am 20 years old, and am hoping that this blog will help change some peoples attitudes towards the disorder, particularly in the UK.